Thorson Day 1a Leader at PokerStars.com EPT Dortmund

March 11 2009, Martin Harris

Swede William Thorson sits atop the leaderboard after the first of two Day Ones at the Pokerstars.com EPT Dortmund Main Event. A total of 115 of the 306 players who began play on Tuesday made it through to Thursday's Day 2. After eight hard-fought levels of play, Thorson ended the day having grown his starting stack of 10,000 chips to an impressive 84,500, placing him ahead of Germany's own Robert Zipf, an online qualifier who ended the day in second with 72,300.

Johannes Strassmann, who final-tabled this event last year (finishing seventh), had an up-and-down day but managed to survive, as did Alexander Kravchenko, Rolf Slotboom, and Soren Kongsgaard. Meanwhile, among those who did not make it through were Remy Biechel, Barny Boatman, Rasmus Nielsen, Roberto Romanello, and Ivan Demidov.

Other familiar faces are expected to appear for the second and last Day One session on Wednesday, including Dario Minieri, Bertrand Grospellier, Marcel Luske, and 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Peter Eastgate. It is expected the total field should well exceed the 411 who played in this event last year when 18-year-old Canadian Mike McDonald took the title.

Here are the leaders at the end of Day 1a:

William Thorson -- 84,500
Robert Zipf -- 72,300
Jan Collado-Fernandez -- 71,100
Martin Bjerring -- 70,500
Jens Wiegel -- 69,300
Holger Kanisch -- 69,000
Petter Petersson -- 65,800
Sebastian Zink -- 64,100
Dino Dinler -- 63,100
Michael Kwiek -- 62,700


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